When we went to Disneyland we stayed at Carousel Inn & Suites. It was a pleasant place just across from the entrance to the park. The kids loved the Disney theme of our family suite and the fact that they had their own room with bunkbeds – just like at home!

It was a gorgeous day for this parade but as you can see the girls were wearing their coats. That’s because it was a wet parade with a lot of water being sprayed out into the crowd! I had so many great pictures from this parade so I made a 3-page layout. The third page will follow the first two when I put them in my book. The Mickey hands were vellum stickers which I put on white cardstock, cut out, and added to my layout with pop-up dots.

This is a very different layout for me – no flowers and no patterned paper! I use these on almost all my pages! And to top it off it’s a white background! I did use something that I haven’t before – the rubon tape. If you want a solid design I would suggest a little practice. It’s not hard to use at all and runs smooth. This was my first time using it and I wasn’t picky on how it turned out. I actually like the imperfected look better than if it was solid. There is 13 feet per runner so it will last awhile. I also pulled out some mesh which I haven’t used in forever. I think it was the perfect touch for this page.

]]>Welcome to the September Close to My Heart Consultant Blog Hop featuring the September Stamp of the Month: Treasures. This set of 13 stamps definately fits in with the lately treads in scrapbooking!

I normally don’t have much to say in my posts (I am a look-at-the-pictures kind of girl) but there is a lot of info here and if you take the time to read through you just might learn something.

Boy oh boy, let me tell you – I really hit left field with this one. I will admit that this is just not my kind of stamp set. I’m more of a daisy girl. Then for some reason I got this idea of fireworks in my head and I had fireworks pictures that needed to be scrapped. I really thought it was a good idea, but it was harder than I thought to actually put it to paper. For one thing I these are Disney photos and the traditional Disney colors did not fit with them. Neither did a red/white/blue theme. So I decided to go for it and match the colors in my photos. Another obstacle I faced was fireworks on a white background. It just doesn’t seem right but I wanted them to be colorful. This just had to wait until the end when everything came together. I really didn’t know if I would like it until then. Another bump in the road was that I didn’t have any yellow cardstock! SO…my solution was to use my brayer to apply yellow ink to white cardstock strips. I could have made them a solid color but this worked out better in the end because I like to have some sort of patterned paper on my layouts and this solved that dilemma as well. After putting my layout together I needed to add some embellishing.

Did you know that you can cut your acrylic stamps? I suggest using a sharp scissors to make sure that they do not tear. If you have a stamp that you would use more often as two pieces then don’t be afraid to do this. I cut the Make a Wish…… stamp. This one was a bit tricky because the stamped parts were so close together (normally I wouldn’t cut one this close and would just ink the part I want to use) but because I was planning to stamp a lot it was easier for me to cut it. When I want to stamp them as one again I can simply piece them together on my block and stamp no problem! Another thing I love about acrylic stamps that you may not know is you can bend or straighten the image to suit your needs. You can see how I did this with the Make a Wish for my border. Yet another trick to acrylic stamps that I like is when creating a title. To make a word straight (or exactly how I want it) I will lay out the letters directly onto my layout. When I have them in place THEN I press down on top of them with my block to pick them up. They are in place and ready to stamp. I usually ink and stamp on a scrap paper to see if it’s how I want it and move any letters if necessary. Often times the CTMH alphabet stamp sets will come with multiples of the same letter. This is so you can ink a word that has two of the same letter at one time (like the a in my Magical). However, that was not the case for the stamp set I used but it is still simple because you can see through the letters to place the exactly where you want. What I did in this case was pressed the word “Magic” on my block. Then I removed the letter “A” (leaving the space) and moved it to the second position and added the L. I stamped the word Magical missing the first A and when I went back with just that letter to fill it in there was a spot where it fit perfectly. Sparkles were the perfect finishing touch to this Magical layout!

Now if you want another unusual idea for a stamp in this set….take a look at the smallest dandelion with the stem pointing up….looks like a spider hanging down if you ask me!

This was a fun layout and the colors worked well together. I kinda wish I had made the rhinestone circle smaller but I like the pattern. I used a Mini Dots All Around template by TheCraftersWorkshop.com. I love this little template for making circles with eyelets, brads, buttons, bling, etc. Layout was based on Scrap Sketch #120.

Well, it was back to scrapbooking today. This picture was taken at Ariel’s Grotto in Disneyland last month. We all had a great time. It is spendy but I would recommend it. Different princesses come to each table to chat, sign autographs, and take pictures. The food was quite good as well. Our favorite was probably the dessert. I enjoyed the healthy choices and fresh produce (sure beats $6 hotdogs!). Definately get priority seating.

For this layout I used the sketch below as a guide. The 3D stickers were added on top of other images on the paper to add more dimension. I don’t know how to explain these Disney stickers by EK Success but you can see that they don’t photograph well due to their shine. I found them in the clearance section today at Target! I figured this would be a good way to use a bunch of my flowers – I love them and just can’t get enough! Good thing I have girls! My first choice for the centers would have been brads but this was also a way to use up some of the many eyelets that I’ve been collecting.

]]>Here are some more Disney pages from my WDW book. Papers and embellishments are things from my stash that I have collected over the years, many are EK Success. The last layout of Animal Kingdom photos uses Magic Moments papers by CTMH. (You can click on a layout to enlarge and see more detail.)

]]>We just made it back from Disneyland last weekend and before we left I was determined to finish my book from our last vacation to Walt Disney World in (gulp) 2005! Alas, it is finished and here they are. Be on the lookout for new layouts from our recent trip to Disneyland!

I found it was easiest and quickest for this project to use a set of coordinating papers for most of the pages. You can see how I did that below. The paper is a retired CTMH paper pack.

The Magic Kingdom at WDW is truly a magical place and I wanted to show that through my layout. Supplies used: double-sided Disney papers by EK Success, diecut from an online swap, CTMH Magic stamp set, liquid glass, and Martha Stewart florentine gold glitter.